A Democratic Socialist Blog

The Work Ethic

The work ethic is nonsense. One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.”
—William Faulkner, interview in Writers at Work, 1958

The work ethic is frequently confused with the slave ethic. The work ethic undermines humanities purpose. To live life to the fullest.

Work is not bad, but there is n morality behind it. OK, no work the art suffers. One cannot be a brain surgeon or neurologist or scientist with out hard work.

Sometimes we have to bust our balls to make things happen.

The work ethic makes the rat race more palatable. We see the futility of the standard, socially approved path in America. It goes something like this: Go to school, get good grades, so you can get a “good” job, make lots of money, get a mortgage and a car and a spouse, keep up with the Joneses, and be “successful”. We know it’s not the path for us; we want to define success for ourselves. But we don’t know how to forge a new path for ourselves, because, well, what would we do for money if we quit? How would we support ourselves? Sometimes there’s a glazed look in our eyes; it’s as if some part of us has died. We are just doing time, working hard and hoping for the next promotion, waiting for the day when we can throw off our shackles, quit our dull jobs, and finally live life. Everything gets put on hold until we have more time, or more money. Meanwhile, life is passing us by. We involve ourselves in a conformist trap to the approval of society because all the other mindless sheep bah their bah’s to the rest of the herd.

It is great when people can contribute. Being a physical therapist, auto mechanic, electrician, or plumber is great. Sad to says it is difficult to get access to skills.

A Job may not incur a lot of hard work, yet work frequently is nit considered a job. Some people work harder outside of the job environment. Mother’s especially work hard with out pay. Which make the Universal Income revelent.

People should be paid for work with out a job. Leisure also create an economy. If a group of people wish to start a music band, they have to work at practice, putting things together, memorizing lyrics and instrumental parts. Not easy but still work. People have conformist values because they have n sense of individuality and work is a refuge because they are talentless. And they despise people who can create and have talent. The term conformity is often used to indicate an agreement to the majority position, brought about either by a desire to ‘fit in’ or be liked (normative) or because of a desire to be correct (informational), or simply to conform to a social role (identification).

Jobs are people management. Anxiety Culture website says, A popular cliché says “nothing worthwhile is easy”. Another version of the same idea has been used as a political slogan: “if it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working”. Beliefs like these don’t only describe viewpoints, they also program our expectations. You are effectively programming yourself to experience hurt and hardship if you accept this idea of “no pain, no gain”. How can you despise ease and laziness then not feel guilty when you take a rest? Try an alternative slogan: “anything worthwhile is best done without effort”, or “if you can’t enjoy it, don’t do it”.

One futurist dream is that technology will eventually free people from the necessity of hard work. This doesn’t mean that all-day leisure and enjoyment would be imposed – those who like being miserable could construct their own simulations of busy offices or noxious factories to work in. But for everybody else, drudgery and toil would be pointless and obsolete. The fact that we are nowhere near manifesting such a dream has more to do with our attitudes and beliefs than with the current state of technology.